Run or Row 5k (aka see you tomorrow)
Preface
This is a long post with no pictures. You only need to read it if you really care about your training and what goes on around here. If you just trust us to do what’s best for you and just want to show up to workout without thinking about what’s happening, you don’t really need to read all of this.
Hint – The people who care about this stuff are generally more successful than those who do not.
How We Got Here
Over the last 5 years of business at CF East Sac, we have seen much growth and change in our membership and our community. At first, as a couple of young athletes ourselves, we attracted many other studly-youngish type athletes. At the time CrossFit was considered a fringe type of cult workout and most people were scared to try it, that is if they had even heard of it. In the early days, nobody in our gym had any pre-conceived ideas about what they were doing. We were able to start coaching everyone the ground up focusing on fundamentals and movement standards. Our stellar athletes learned quickly and quickly became competitive in a new sport known as CrossFit.
As we have continued to grow, CrossFit has become a household name. More and more now, all kinds of people are willing to give it a shot, and this is the way it should be. We have always prided ourselves on our ability to teach and scale CrossFit to participants of all ages, abilities, and states of injury. At one point in time, we did something no other CrossFit gym we knew of had done and began to offer classes based on ability, hence the Level 1 program and the Foundations program you all have come to know. Our idea was to be able to coach beginner level athletes at a beginner level, and advanced athletes at an advanced level.
Early on the multi-level program worked pretty well, but as time went on some problems began to arise. The first problem we realized was in the name scheme we used for the classes. The Foundations program was named based on our intentions to continue to re-enforce fundamental aspects of movement and to design a program that would maximize intensity for newer CrossFit athletes. The Level 1 program was named with the premise that people in the class could do some of the workouts “as prescribed.” To us they were doing CrossFit at “Level 1” compared to say Rich Froning, or Annie Thorisdottir who are at Level 5. We were thinking as we grew we could possibly add a Level 2 class, which would accommodate athletes who were really excelling and were preparing for higher levels of competition.
By calling our beginner program Foundations and our intermediate+ program Level 1 we set up a situation where people almost felt demeaned to be in the beginner program for an extended time. Passing the Level 1 test and graduating to Level 1 appeared to all of you to be a hurdle that everyone should be able to jump over. After all, it was nothing that impressive, just Level 1 right? Well in reality, meeting all of the requirements to actually pass the Level 1 test is quite difficult and many of the participants allowed into Level 1 in fact did not pass all of the requirements. True passing of the Level 1 test is an indicator that an athlete has achieved proficiency in the fundamental functional movements and has proven a satisfactory level of fitness, but still may not be ready to do classic CrossFit WODs “as Rx’ed.”
Many of our achievement driven members figured out how to pass the Level 1 test and accomplished that goal to varying degrees. They then graduated to a program that was being designed for a competitive CrossFit athlete. Snatch complexes, muscle ups, handstand pushups galore. Very little coaching on fundamentals with a focus on the nuance of competition skills. A hundred of these, and a hundred of those, or maybe just 25 of something you can’t even do 1 of yet. Weights prescribed for high reps in metcons were equal to or higher than many of your 1 rep maxes. Some of the workouts were so hard that Travis and I could barely even do ourselves. Certain days in the program were highly specialized assuming that you come here every day and can afford to work this skill today and that tomorrow and so forth, yet the vast majority of you only workout here 2.5x per week.
As time has gone on, the sport of CrossFit has become more specialized and far more elite. The divide between training for overall fitness and training for the sport has become substantial. As this has happened, our Level 1 programming has followed this trend becoming more specialized and elite, despite the fact that the percentage of our members with highly competitive goals is very small.
So what’s the big deal, you just take the elite WOD and scale it down right? and it’s just as good right? Well actually no it’s not. The intent of that workout wasn’t in line with your goals, and when you scaled it to your ability it became a very different workout, which is OK, but not ideal. What we have often seen is both our athletes and our coaches feeling frustrated. There has to be a better way.
For a long time, as many of you probably noticed, Foundations was just a scaled version of yesterday’s Level 1 program. A couple months ago as we were beginning to kick around some ideas about restructuring our program, we decided to re-structure the Foundations program so that it better applied to people who aren’t here to train for CrossFit competitions. We wanted to make it a different program that wasn’t just a scaled version of our Level 1 program. Our goal was to create higher intensity by re-enforcing fundamental movements, mixing in more low skill level movements, and leaving out the nuance that is required for competing in CF at a high level. Although we did this quietly behind the scenes, everyone in Foundations noticed immediately that they were getting better workouts. We were getting compliments on a daily basis about how great the workouts were and how much you all liked them. That is what is going to be happening here from now on. Our goal is to create a program that is more in line with the true goals of our members than what we have offered in the past.
GPP
GPP is a fancy pants exercise science term that stands for General Physical Preparedness. GPP is at the heart of CrossFit’s definition of fitness, and is the goal we all should be striving for as CrossFitters. The vast majority of our membership is coming here because they want to become as fit as they can possibly be, and they want to look better naked. You probably didn’t come here to train for the games right? The GPP program is going to be getting back to mastering CrossFit basics, and developing the capacity to do more work than anyone else you know who doesn’t workout here. By getting back to a GPP focus, you will learn to move better than ever, you will get stronger, you will develop higher levels of conditioning, you will lose more body fat, and you will achieve the true definition of GPP which is to be equally well prepared for any physical task that you may encounter in the gym or out.
By aiming the program at general fitness vs. competitors, we can actually deliver better results than the current Level 1 program. Remember, the Level 1 program has been aimed at athletes who wish to compete at high levels. Unfortunately, training for CrossFit competition has become such a specific task, that you may actually have to sacrifice some general fitness to do so. That may sound weird, because the top CrossFit athletes truly are the fittest people alive, but they did not get that way by focusing on snatching and doing muscle ups. They were able to snatch and do muscle ups well because their fitness base and movement proficiency was huge to begin with, and it’s because their base is so huge that they can actually benefit from very highly skilled movements in a way that very few athletes can. If you try to perform a highly advanced training program specific to CF competition and you do not already have a huge base, you are likely engraining poor motor recruitment patterns, overlooking the fundamentals that are crucial to your development, and generally sacrificing intensity for nuance.
Some of you may be concerned at this point that the new program won’t be hard enough, or you won’t get to lift enough, or you really want to get better at snatching and you won’t get a chance now. Those ideas couldn’t be farther from the truth. We believe in strength training as a staple of your fitness. We believe Olympic lifting is a staple in developing athleticism. And we believe performing functional movements at high intensity to be the king of all modalities toward improving your fitness. The difference is that the movements and movement combinations we use will be less complex which will actually allow you to get stronger. You will be able to do more work faster and more safely. By focusing on more fundamental aspects of the movements, you will improve faster than by trying to tackle more complex combinations of movements. GPP will use more elegant forms of functional movement as well as emphasize movements that you guys enjoy more such as sleds, sandbags, ropes etc. You know the type of movements that just kick your ass because you don’t have to think much about where your hands go and your feet and when to breathe and where do my eyes go and do I have the right shoes on and… the list goes on. The point is, be ready to get stronger, fitter, and more badass than ever.
Performance Rx
For the group of our gym that has already reached a very high level of fitness and skill, who train for CrossFit as a sport vs. a fitness program, we are offering Performance Rx. Athletes must be capable of doing many of CrossFit’s elite benchmark WODs as prescribed to get into this program. Not to say that there won’t be scaling within this program, but the scaling won’t be so much that is changes the intent of the workout. This program will emphasize the heavy and complex Olympic lifting movements, heavy metcons, and high skill level gymnastics. The program will be periodized to get stronger at lifts and gymnastics in the off-season while maintaining conditioning, and will shift to increasing ability in higher output conditioning WODs prior to the Open. Participants in this program should plan to stick to the programming for at least 90% of their workouts, meaning that you are expected to train consistently 5 days per week.
Admission to the Performance Rx program will be by invite only. If you wish to train with this group and have not been invited, please talk to one of the coaches. We will set up an evaluation with you to see where you are at and help you set goals to get to this level of training. If you can meet those goals and are in fact eager to compete at higher levels, you will be considered for the program.
The New Schedule
Many of our classes throughout the day will start on the half hour vs every hour. With staggered start times, we can effectively move traffic around the gym and allow space for everyone to get their WODs in. Most of the classes are at the same time as they were with a few minor shifts. For our current schedule visit out schedule page. I am working on getting the color scheme updated so it’s more visually pleasing. You can also log into your Front Desk HQ account to view a prettier version of the new schedule. On your desktop you can switch to weekly view for the best overview of the schedule. Phones only have the list view available.
Conversation
If you have any questions or concerns regarding the new program, please post to comments and lets have an intelligent discussion about the direction of CFES and your training.
